When it rains in Sacramento, these neighborhoods face greater flood risk
When heavy rain falls in Sacramento, it’s historically redlined neighborhoods — many of which today are home to low-income households and residents of color — that are at a higher risk of experiencing flooding.
Gardenland was identified in the 1930s as a ”declining” and undesirable neighborhood by the federally sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in redlining maps, a reflection of patterns of discrimination racist lending practices that continue to have rippling social, health and economic impacts.
At the time, surveyors said the neighborhood was subject to standing water during periods of heavy rainfall. Today it’s a majority Latino neighborhood with a large number of Asian, Black and Native American residents. Homes there are still jeopardized by potential flood damage.
It’s a trend reflected across the United States: homes in formerly redlined neighborhoods are 25% more likely to be flooded compared to non-redlined areas, according to a March report from the real estate firm Redfin that analyzed redlining maps and flood risk data.
And in general, studies have found residents in mobile homes, low-income people and residents of color are disproportionately impacted by floods and flood risk, regardless of whether they live in a historically redlined community.
Of all the cities it analyzed, Redfin found that Sacramento had the highest flood risk disparity between neighborhoods that were deemed desirable and undesirable.
In Sacramento, about 20% of homes in redlined and yellowlined areas — neighborhoods that were deemed by the FHA “hazardous” or “definitely declining,” respectively — face high risk of flooding today, Redfin found. That’s compared to about 12% of homes in greenlined and bluelined neighborhoods that were considered desirable.
Nearly half of the households in Sacramento’s redlined and yellowlined areas today are occupied by people of color, compared to a third of households in greenlined and bluelined areas, according to Redfin.
Some Sacramento neighborhoods were redlined because of issues like limited or aging infrastructure, or proximity to railroads or industrial sites. But often times they were devalued because they were areas populated by immigrants and people of color, with federal maps detailing some neighborhoods as possessing an “infiltration of subversive racial elements.”
These less desirable neighborhoods in Sacramento included much of downtown and Midtown, Old North Sacramento, swathes of Oak Park and Tahoe Park and parts of East Sacramento, among others.
Private mortgage lenders and the Federal Housing Administration at the time would often refuse to lend to residents in neighborhoods it deemed declining or hazardous, severing these communities from capital investments or preventing families from accumulating generational wealth.
Sacramento was a much smaller city back in the 1930s when bank appraisers demarcated neighborhoods. More recently developed neighborhoods built after redlining was banned, like Hagginwood, are also at extreme risk for flooding too, in part because of its proximity to Arden Creek, which can easily overflow during torrential rain when storm drains dump water into the tributary. Homes in North and South Natomas are also at severe risk for flooding.
While many parts of the city is protected against a 100-year flood — the kind of flooding that has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year — thousands of homes in Sacramento would experience significant flood damage during a particularly extreme storm. Sacramento, which sits on naturally marshy land and is widely considered one of the most flood-prone major cities in America, is heavily reliant on existing levees and bypasses along the Sacramento and American rivers to protect against severe flooding.
Sacramento is still years away from meeting a state mandate prompted by Hurricane Katrina requiring urban areas be protected against a 200-year flood. And experiencing a 500-year flood like Hurricane Harvey which hit Houston in 2017 — a storm that has about a 0.2% chance of occurring in any given year — would do devastating damage in Sacramento.
More extreme storms and flooding will likely increase because of climate change, experts say. Heavier, more rare rainfall events increase in warming climates, studies have found, increasing the number of people at risk for flooding. More rain than snow in the Sierra during storms will also mean more water rushing down from the mountains to the Central Valley’s waterways.
Already, 2021 has been a record-breaking year for extreme rainfall in Sacramento. The “bomb cyclone” and atmospheric river storms that hit Northern California in October dumped more than 5 inches of rain in the Capital region in just 24 hours.
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 11:04 AM.